The present invention relates to a document acknowledge system, more particularly, to horizontal/vertical-run length smoothing algorithm circuits in which a horizontal-run length smoothing algorithm (H-RLSA) and a vertical run length smoothing algorithm (V-RLSA) are performed by hardware and a document region divide circuit for dividing a document region in which the smoothed data is logical-produced by hardware.
Conventionally, the document acknowledge system scans a document horizontally to store horizontal data, and then scans the document vertically to store vertical data. Then, the system performs a horizontal-run length smoothing algorithm process. By this process, while only binary data "1" succeeded above a predetermined number of times is maintained naturally, binary data "1" not succeeded above the predetermined number of times is canceled. For example, provided that the system scans the document, so that it stores the horizontal data "0001111000111111", and a threshold value is "5", the smoothed data "0000000000111111" is obtained, since only binary data "1" succeeded above 5 times is maintained naturally and binary data "1" not succeeded above 5 times is reset into binary data "0" by the horizontal-run length smoothing algorithm process.
Then, the document acknowledge system performs a vertical-run length smoothing algorithm process. Similarly, by this process, while only binary data "1" succeeded above a predetermined number of times is maintained naturally, binary data "1" not succeeded above the predetermined number of times is canceled. The smoothed data obtained from these processes then are divided by block unit. These divided results allow the document text and graphic region to be divided in accordance with height and width of the block.
However, in the above-mentioned conventional document acknowledge system, the horizontal-run length smoothing algorithm and vertical-run length smoothing algorithm are processed by software executed by a microprocessor and the smoothed data also is logical-produced by the software. Thus, the microprocessor in the system can be loaded with too much works, causing its efficiency to be reduced and its process to be run slowly.